Yes Sony is one of those huge, evil, multi-national companies that Naomi Klein taught us to hate, but damn if they don’t make the coolest adverts on telly (except for the Cadbury gorilla of course, he’s still our favourite).

First it was the bouncing balls and San Fancisco, then it was the paint and tower blocks and now we’re being promised something which includes:

2.5 tonnes of plasticine
40 animators
3 weeks
189 2ft bunnies
150 1ft cubes
10ft x 20ft purple wave
30ft giant rabbit.
6 cameras.

Sony Bravia…you had us at ‘2.5 tonnes of plasticine’.

Click here to see a quick teaser video.

John McTiernan, director of a Kwint touchstone, Die Hard, has been sentenced to four months in prison for not being overly honest with the FBI:

John McTiernan was given the jail term after he admitted last year misleading federal agents investigating the case of Anthony Pellicano, a private investigator charged with setting up illegal wiretaps to pry on several Hollywood celebrities.

Oops. Wonder if this was payback for what happened to agents Johnson and Johnson in the first John McClaine movie?

I was going to say that helming Die Hard should have given McTiernan an automatic Get Out of Jail Free card, but then realised that the sentence is probably lenient in that it involves his hand in the remake of Rollerball.

Another crime that John could have had taken into account was Last Action Hero, but he also brought us Hans Gruber which has to count for something…

Verdict: Cut the guy some slack and sentence him to direct Die Hard 5 instead.

File under only in America:

Firearms shops in the US are stocking pink rifles and shotguns to encourage girls to get into shooting.

I’m all for breaking up silly gender stereotypes, but wouldn’t it be better to start designing books in camouflage greens and browns to encourage gun owners to read instead? Maybe ship a few thousand copies of Watership Down disguised in Tom Clancy jacket covers to Gander Mountain and see what happens… probably a sudden increase in rabbit mortality rates, but you never know.

It’s a great story though and one that involves references to “a Remington 20-gauge shotgun with a pink and black stock emblazoned with the slogan: “Shoot like a girl if you can!””

Only a matter of time before one of these falls into the hands of Frank Castle and Garth Ennis.

In Baraboo, Jim Astle, owner of Jim’s Gun Supply in Baraboo, has been coating guns in pink and other colours for four years. His 12-year-old daughter owns a pink camouflage shotgun.

“Females want to shoot guns, but they want them to look pretty, too,” he said. “Guys could give a rat’s butt what their gun looks like.”

If you do give a rat’s butt what your gun looks like then it’s never been a better time to colour coordinate. Jim has this covered:

One problem with superheroes (and there are lots) is that they just won’t die.

It’s not their super powers that keep them alive though. They are protected by the companies that own them and no matter how long in the tooth they get it’s never a good time to slaughter a cash cow. So instead they reboot them, drop them into alternate timelines or universes where they can be fucked about without damaging the franchise. Or occasionally they will pull an EVENT and do in fact ‘kill’ them… just long enough for weeping fanboys to blow their wads on plastic memorial crap at Forbidden Planet before resurrecting the laytex wearing fucks.

The most interesting thing to happen to these weirdos in recent memory is they all died. And came back as zombies. You can get the nitty gritty here and at least the first arc of stories is a fun Kwint endorsed read. You can check out the fantastic cover work here which among other things proves once and for all that Mary Jane is wasted on that idiot Peter Parker. She’s even hot when rotting:

And look at those cute, but oh so lucky mice nesting in her guts…

Wow, Bob wow:

The London Film Festival has really outdone itself this time.There are also events with Wes Anderson, Robert Rodriguez and Steve Buscemi. And that’s before we even get to the films… which we will do as we’re going to be taking a close look at the festival this year.

Speaking of Rodriguez isn’t it weird that his Grindhouse effort has gone to under-performing-misfire to find a place at this year’s LFF. Planet Terror is screening on the 27th and 29th of October. I loved Death Proof and a lot of people tell me that was the weak link in the chain…

You can get full details of the festival here, but do keep Kwint in mind too.

Remember the scene in Minority Report where little Tom is being hassled by advertising? I was left scratching my head wondering why everyone in the background was content to have that digital crap beamed at their eyeballs rather than smashing at it with very analogue axe handles. We’re getting closer to that kind of thing, but thankfully right now the emphasis is on on fun rather than retinal assault. Have you seen the weird pixelated codey things popping up to help promote 28 Weeks Later* on DVD?

QR codes are a big deal in Japan, but I think I’m correct in writing that these ‘Spread the virus’ ads are the first ones to use QR in the UK.

You can read a little more about the campaign here and play with your own codes here.

As Gia says, it’ll be interesting to see who starts to play with these codes next, but perhaps the first thing we’ll see is a battle for supremacy, VHS vs Betamax style, as an American campaign is opting for similar but Canadian Semacode.

* For the record I was a little underwhelmed by the 28 Days Later sequel, but am oddly excited about the idea of Garland and Boyle taking the thing back for a third movie… set perhaps in Moscow.

The Internet works beautifully as the ultimate time capsule - anyone can access it, you don’t need a spade and the crap inside isn’t waterlogged and covered in rust. The music, film and television industries are the first to cry foul about illegal downloading , but sales aren’t simply in the toilet because consumers are ripping off the crap groomed for the mega stores. We now have the chance to spread the net a little wider and find that there’s more interesting life twitching excitedly at the end of the long tail than at the engorged stupid head.

The Internet is revealing previously obscure or tricky to find treats from years back that otherwise would remain neglected or available only to niche audiences that were already converted. If you’re 14 and on a punk tracker looking for the latest Avril Lavigne album (bless!) then we’d hope that someone a little older and wiser may point you in the direction of a Runaways or Slits album or even the entire back catalogue of both. If you insist on having one of those iPod thing then at least fill it with something worth your time.

Part of Kwint’s remit is to point you in the direction of the stuff that no one else has a vested interest in promoting. We do have a vested interest in promoting this stuff because we want our readers to be smart and tuned into the stuff that we get a kick out of. If that means ignoring the latest piece of shit multi million dollar blockbuster in favour of championing a twenty-five year old documentary then we’ll climb over all the multiplexes in London to get to one dusty old battered VHS tape.

First up then is the still stunning, sad and funny punk rock road trip, Another State of Mind. It’s a film that’s hard to watch without thinking that they don’t make teenagers quite like they used to…

[Read more →]

It’s hard not to click on a link when it reads Leading surgeon removes suspected alien implants, and we have to say, we weren’t disappointed.

The year 2000 as predicted 90 years ago by French futurist Villemard. Where are our ‘car shoes’ god dammit?

Favourite headline of the day: Drunk congress MP caught with women in guesthouse. Why did he think that claiming the women were ‘his relatives’ was a good idea?

Say hello to the Lamborghini one-million Euro supercar. There’s something very wrong with a car that has to have a G force gauge.

Weirdly fascinating: Women’s Army Corp uniforms 1942-1978.

One half of Kwint loves Heroes, while the other half loathes the bloody thing, but we can safely say that 100% of us, and every right-thinking person on the planet for that matter, is going to cringe at the news that Hayden ‘the cheerleader one’ Panettiere is to embark on what is perhaps laughingly referred to as a ‘pop career’.

Hayden, who plays cheerleader Claire Bennett in the hit series, has signed a deal with Hollywood records, the same company who look after fellow teen star turned singer Hilary Duff.

Her first single is a pop-rock anthem called Your New Girlfriend. And the word is Hayden’s song is actually quite good.

Her tentatively titled debut album, Fallen Love, is expected to be released in early 2008.

Wow, things sure move fast in the world of entertainment these days don’t they? Just six short months ago no one had ever heard of Hayden Panettiere and now she’s got a single on the way and a ‘tentatively titled album’. What she doesn’t have though is any discernible charisma.

Ok, she’s got the whole golden-era Britney blond innocence thing down to a tee, but anyone who can run into a burning building dressed as a cheerleader to drag a heavily singed mortal to safety and still make the whole thing look like one of those establishing shots from HolbyCity where an extra gazes thoughtfully at an anal thermometer….well, lets just say we can’t see Girls Aloud quaking in their thigh highs just yet.

So you like Indian and Asian food, but all the takeaway places near you sell bog-standard, MSG-loaded stuff that’s not really reminiscent of the ‘real stuff’.

What do you do? You place an ad on Craig’s List (PDF link) asking for a local, freelance ‘personal chef’ obviously.

If you know Indian vegetarian cooking in depth and can prepare delicious, healthy, fresh, authentic Indian vegetarian food then we’d like to hear from you…we’ll arrange for you to cook a sample meal or two which we will pay you for and then we’ll see what works out for us all. This is a part-time position. You will be self-employed and responsible for your own taxes, etc. We’ll pay you an hourly rate we will agree with you plus grocery bills for the food you prepare. You can prepare food in your own place and we can arrange to collect from you, possibly for us to freeze for later eating. We will work with you to come up with menus and schedules that work out for you and us.”

How cool is that? No more queuing behind drunks in the local Chinese and no more ordering the same old thing over and over again because ‘you know you like it’. Just convenient, healthy, tasty food cooked JUST FOR YOU.

You can read more about how this guy outsourced his takeaway needs and how he got an ex Hare Krishna to cook his meals for $5 an hour plus food bills over at Tim Ferris’s ‘Experiments in Lifestyle Design blog.